CO2 and IPCC Climate Modeling

[last update: 2010/04/03]

The IPCC conclusion that the warming trend in the late 20th
century is significant and caused mainly by anthropogenic CO2, is a result of
theoretical climate models (General Circulation Models - GCMs) in which the
human-defined models are only able to reproduce current global temperature
trends since 1970 by increasing the CO2 levels.

The availability of the CRU emails since November 2009 has
shed further light on some of the modeling issues. For example: Tom Wigley
(senior scientist at NCAR) to Michael Mann (creator of the hockey stick
graph) [Oct 14, 2009]: “The
Figure you sent is very deceptive. As an example, historical runs with PCM
look as though they match observations -- but the match is a fluke. PCM has
no indirect aerosol forcing and a low climate sensitivity -- compensating
errors. In my (perhaps too harsh) view, there have been a number of
dishonest presentations of model results by individual authors and by IPCC.”
[http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?eid=1057&filename=1255553034.txt]

The following figure shows the estimated radiative forcing
components as defined by the IPCC in the latest scientific basis report (May
2007). The report states: “Energy consumption
by human activities, such as heating buildings, powering electrical
appliances and fuel combustion by vehicles, can directly release heat into
the environment. Anthropogenic heat release is not an RF, in that it does not
directly perturb the radiation budget; the mechanisms are not well
identified and so it is here referred to as a non-initial radiative
effect.” Note also in the following figure the large uncertainty bar
for aerosols and cloud effects, which are poorly understood and thus not well
modeled.

A serious flaw is obvious in the IPCC chart shown below:
the only “Natural process” affecting climate is a very slight influence of
solar irradiance!

The IPCC conclusion that the warming trend in the late 20th
century is significant and caused mainly by anthropogenic

The IPCC AR4 Scientific Basis report (Part 6) states: “Climate models are
used to simulate episodes of past climate... Models allow the linkage of
cause and effect in past climate change to be investigated. Models also help
to fill the gap between the local and global scale in palaeoclimate, as
palaeoclimatic information is often sparse, patchy and seasonal. For example,
long ice core records show a strong correlation between local temperature in
Antarctica and the globally mixed gases CO2and methane, but the
causal connections between these variables are best explored with the help of
models.” So, models in which the
causal connections are programmed in, are then used to explore the causal
connections – a circular proof.

One major problem is that Antarctica does not match the
models and is now ignored by the IPCC.

The following figure is from the IPCC AR4 report (2007).
It does not show modeling of Antarctica, because Antarctica does not fit the
models.

From IPCC AR 4 Figure 9.6

The following figure (left) shows modeled temperature
change from the IPCC TAR report (2001). The models show warming in Antarctica
with cooling around the Antarctic Peninsula and in the adjacent Weddell Sea –
exactly the opposite of the observed trend. The following figure (right)
shows the observed temperature trend in the “cooling” area.

Left:
From IPCC TAR Figure 9.2 – Modeled temperature
differences from 1975 to 1995 to the first decade in the 21st century. Right:
From NASA / GISS database.

The NOAA Earth System
Research Laboratory – Global Monitoring Division maintains a network of CO2
monitoring stations around the world. [http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/aggi/]. The following figures compare the recent CO2
trends at Palmer Station (on the Antarctic Peninsula) and the South Pole.
There is virtually no difference between the two locations, although there is
a substantial temperature difference as seen in the previous temperature
trend graphs. The next figure compares CO2 and temperature trend at the South
Pole showing the lack of correlation between the two.

CO2 Trends at Palmer
Station and at the South Pole – Same CO2 Trends, Very Different Temperature
Trends

Combining CO2 and South
Pole Temperature Trends – No Correlation

The greenhouse hypothesis
suggests the warming would be greatest in the atmosphere (troposphere) and
that the warming would be significant both day and night. It would also be
greatest in the polar regions because gases like CO2 are most effective at
trapping the heat in very cold temperatures. The reason that the warming
should be greatest at the polar regions is due to the following: CO2 in the
atmosphere absorbs and re-emits infra-red radiation in distinctive wavebands,
particularly around 12 - 18 microns. Radiation at other wavelengths simply
passes through the atmosphere without being intercepted by CO2. The wavelength of infrared radiation from
the earth's surface depends on the temperature of the surface. All bodies
emit infrared over a wide band of wavelengths, but peak at a `dominant
wavelength' determined by the temperature of the emitting surface. For
example, an object with a temperature of 32°C will radiate most intensely at
9.5 microns. At 15°C (the mean surface temperature of the earth), the
dominant wavelength will be 10 microns. At -25°C, it becomes 11.7 microns,
and at -50°C becomes 13 microns. The problem is that the observations do not
match the CO2 hypothesis.

The IPCC 2007 Report Chapter 9 – Understanding and
Attributing Climate Change [http://ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu/wg1/Report/AR4WG1_Print_Ch09.pdf]
provides a climate model based simulation of the expected CO2 “spatial
signature” of all forcings including anthropogenic CO2 (left-hand figure
below shows degrees change per decade). However, a study of actual data from
radiosonde data shows a non-CO2 based signature [http://www.climatescience.gov/Library/sap/sap1-1/finalreport/sap1-1-final-chap5.pdf].
The models do not match reality. In reference to this, Richard Lindzen (MIT
Atmospheric Sciences Professor) stated: “surface warming should be accompanied by warming in the tropics
around an altitude of about 9km that is about 2.5 times greater than at the
surface. Measurements show that warming at these levels is only about 3/4 of
what is seen at the surface, implying that only about a third of the surface
warming is associated with the greenhouse effect, and, quite possibly, not
all of even this really small warming is due to man (Lindzen, 2007, Douglass
et al, 2007). This further implies that all models predicting significant
warming are greatly overestimating warming. This should not be surprising
(though inevitably in climate science, when data conflicts with models, a
small coterie of scientists can be counted upon to modify the data. Thus,
Santer, et al (2008), argue that stretching uncertainties in observations and
models might marginally eliminate the inconsistency. That the data should
always need correcting to agree with models is totally implausible and
indicative of a certain corruption within the climate science community).”
[http://www.quadrant.org.au/blogs/doomed-planet/2009/07/resisting-climate-hysteria]

A study comparing the models to observations from
satellites and balloons (1979-2004) also shows a problem with the models. The
following figure is from the study. “A comparison of tropical temperature
trends with model predictions”, by Douglass, D.H., J.R. Christy, B.D.
Pearson, and S.F. Singer, 2007 - International Journal of Climatology. [http://www.scribd.com/doc/904914/A-comparison-of-tropical-temperature-trends-with-model-predictions]. The models
exhibit the CO2 theory of most warming occurring in the troposphere. However,
the satellite and balloon based observations show warming only at the surface
of the earth. The report stated: “Model results and observed temperature trends are
in disagreement in most of the tropical troposphere, being separated by more than
twice the uncertainty of the model mean. In layers near 5 km, the modelled
trend is 100 to 300% higher than observed, and, above 8 km, modelled and
observed trends have opposite signs. … On the whole, the evidence
indicates that model trends in the troposphere are very likely inconsistent
with observations that indicate that, since 1979, there is no significant
long-term amplification factor relative to the surface. If these results
continue to be supported, then future projections of temperature change, as
depicted in the present suite of climate models, are likely too high.”

In a 2008 paper published by
Engel et al in Nature Geoscience [http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/12/081215111305.htm]
found that “Most
atmospheric models predict that the rate of transport of air from the
troposphere to the above lying stratosphere should be increasing due to
climate change. … an international group of researchers has now found that
this does not seem to be happening. On the contrary, it seems that the air
masses are moving more slowly than predicted. … Due to the results presented
now, the predictions of atmospheric models must be re-evaluated.”

In an assessment of the IPCC modeling, a paper by:
Bellamy, D. and Barrett, J. (2007). “Climate stability: an inconvenient
proof”, (Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers – Civil
Engineering, 160, 66-72) states: “The
climate system is a highly complex system and, to date, no computer models
are sufficiently accurate for their predictions of future climate to be
relied upon.”

In another review of IPCC modeling (Carter, R.M. (2007). “The
myth of dangerous human-caused climate change” The Aus/MM New Leaders
Conference, Brisbane May 3, 2007) Carter examined evidence on the predictive
validity of the general circulation models (GCMs) used by the IPCC
scientists. He found that “while
the models included some basic principles of physics, scientists had to make
“educated guesses” about the values of many parameters because knowledge
about the physical processes of the earth’s climate is incomplete. In
practice, the GCMs failed to predict recent global average temperatures as
accurately as simple curve-fitting approaches. They also forecast
greater warming at higher altitudes in the tropics when the opposite has been
the case.”

A 2007 study by Douglass and Christy published in the
Royal Meteorological Society’s International Journal of Climatology [http://www.physorg.com/news116592109.html]
found that the climate models do not match the data for the tropical
troposphere. ““When we
look at actual climate data, however, we do not see accelerated warming in
the tropical troposphere. Instead, the lower and middle atmosphere are
warming the same or less than the surface. For those layers of the
atmosphere, the warming trend we see in the tropics is typically less than
half of what the models forecast.””. A previous study cited in the
same article blamed the data instead of the models!

A 2008 study “On the Credibility of Climate Predictions” (D.
Koutsoyiannis, A. Efstradiadis, N. Mamassis & A. Christofides, Department
of Water Resources, Faculty of Civil Engineering, National Technical
University of Athens, Greece) states: “Geographically
distributed predictions of future climate, obtained through climate models,
are widely used in hydrology and many other disciplines, typically without
assessing their reliability. Here we compare the output of various models to
temperature and precipitation observations from eight stations with long
(over 100 years) records from around the globe. The results show that
models perform poorly, even at a climatic (30-year) scale. Thus local model
projections cannot be credible, whereas a common argument that models can
perform better at larger spatial scales is unsupported.” [http://www.atypon-link.com/IAHS/doi/pdf/10.1623/hysj.53.4.671]

Increasing atmospheric CO2 does not by itself result in
significant warming. The climate models assume a significant positive
feedback of increased water vapor in order to amplify the CO2 effect and
achieve the future warming reported by the IPCC. According to the models, as the
Earth warms more water evaporates from the ocean, and the amount of water
vapor in the atmosphere increases. Since water vapor is the main greenhouse
gas, this leads to a further increase in the atmospheric temperature. The
models assume that changes in temperature and water vapor will result in a
constant relative humidity (i.e. as temperatures increase, the specific
humidity increases, keeping the relative humidity constant. This is one of
the most controversial aspects of the models. Some studies say that the
positive feedback is correct, others say not. Models that include water vapor
feedback with constant relative humidity predict the Earth's surface will
warm more than twice as much over the next 100 years as models that contain
no water vapor feedback.

According to the IPCC [http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/wg1/ar4-wg1-chapter3.pdf]
“Water vapour is also the
most important gaseous source of infrared opacity in the atmosphere,
accounting for about 60% of the natural greenhouse effect for clear skies,
and provides the largest positive feedback in model projections of climate
change.“

MIT’s Richard Lindzen (the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of
Meteorology at MIT) argues that the IPCC models have not only overestimated
warming due to positive water vapor feedback, they also have the sign wrong:
“Our own
research suggests the presence of a major negative feedback involving clouds
and water vapor, where models have completely failed to simulate observations
(to the point of getting the sign wrong for crucial dependences). If we are
right, then models are greatly exaggerating sensitivity to increasing CO2.” [http://meteo.lcd.lu/globalwarming/Lindzen/Lindzen_testimony.html] He
also stated: “the
way current models handle factors such as clouds and water vapor is
disturbingly arbitrary. In many instances the underlying physics is simply
not known. In other instances there are identifiable errors. … current models
depend heavily on undemonstrated positive feedback factors to predict high
levels of warming.” [http://www.cato.org/pubs/regulation/regv15n2/reg15n2g.html]

The National Research Council (National Academy of
Sciences) produced a study called “Climate Change Science: An Analysis of
Some Key Questions” [http://books.nap.edu//html/climatechange/].
Here are a couple of statements from that report:

“Because
of the large and still uncertain level of natural variability inherent
in the climate record and the uncertainties in the time histories of the
various forcing agents (and particularly aerosols), a causal linkage
between the buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and the observed
climate changes during the 20th century cannot be unequivocally
established. The fact that the magnitude of the observed warming is
large in comparison to natural variability as simulated in climate
models is suggestive of such a linkage, but it does not constitute proof
of one because the model simulations could be deficient in natural
variability on the decadal to century time scale.”

“Knowledge
of the climate system and projections about the future climate are
derived from fundamental physics and chemistry through models and
observations of the atmosphere and the climate system… A major
limitation of these model forecasts for use around the world is the
paucity of data available to evaluate the ability of coupled models to
simulate important aspects of past climate. In addition, the
observing system available today is a composite of observations that
neither provide the information nor the continuity in the data needed to
support measurements of climate variables.”

“Solar
irradiance, the amount of solar energy striking Earth, has been
monitored accurately only since the late 1970s. However, indirect
measures of solar activity suggest that there has been a positive trend
of solar irradiance over the industrial era… It is not implausible that
solar irradiance has been a significant driver of climate during part of
the industrial era, as suggested by several modeling studies.
However, solar forcing has been measured to be very small since 1980,
and greenhouse gas forcing has certainly been much larger in the past
two decades”

The sun provides the energy that warms the earth. And yet
according to the NOAA National Climatic Data Center [http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/globalwarming.html
] “Our understanding
of the indirect effects of changes in solar output and feedbacks in the
climate system is minimal”. The importance of fluctuations and
trends in solar inputs in affecting the climate is inadequately modeled.
Although the sun exhibits varies types of energy related events (sunspots,
solar flares, coronal mass ejections), sunspots have been observed and
counted for the longest amount of time.

A 2010 paper by Ohashi and
Tanaka (“Data Analysis of Recent Warming Pattern in the Arctic”, SOLA 2010) [http://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/sola/6A/SpecialEdition/1/_pdf]
reports: “It is concluded
that the arctic warming before 1989 especially in winter was explained by the
positive trend of the AOI. Moreover the intensified Beaufort High and the
drastic decrease of the sea ice concentrations in September after 1989 were
associated with the recent negative trend of the AOI. Since the decadal
variation of the AO is recognized as the natural variability of the global
atmosphere, it is shown that both of decadal variabilities before and
after 1989 in the Arctic can be mostly explained by the natural variability
of the AO not by the external response due to the human activity.”

A 2007 paper by Syun-Ichi Akasofu at the International
Arctic Research Center (University of Alaska Fairbanks) provides an analysis
of warming trends in the Arctic. [http://www.iarc.uaf.edu/highlights/2007/akasofu_3_07/index.php
] They analyzed the capability of climate models (GCMs) to reproduce the past
temperature trends of the Arctic (shown in the following figure): “we asked the IPCC arctic group
(consisting of 14 sub-groups headed by V. Kattsov) to “hindcast” geographic
distribution of the temperature change during the last half of the last
century. To “hindcast” means to ask whether a model can produce results that
match the known observations of the past; if a model can do this, we can be
much more confident that the model is reliable for predicting future
conditions … Ideally, the pattern of change modeled by the GCMs should be
identical or very similar to the pattern seen in the measured data. We
assumed that the present GCMs would reproduce the observed pattern with at
least reasonable fidelity. However, we found that there was no resemblance at
all.”

Model vs Observed
temperature Changes [from Akasofu, above]

The authors’ conclusions: “only a fraction of the present
warming trend may be attributed to the greenhouse effect resulting from human
activities. This conclusion is contrary to the IPCC (2007) Report, which states that “most” of
the present warming is due to the greenhouse effect. One possible cause of
the linear increase may be that the Earth is still recovering from the Little
Ice Age. It is urgent that natural changes be correctly identified and
removed accurately from the presently on-going changes in order to find the
contribution of the greenhouse effect… The fact that an almost linear change has been
progressing, without a distinct change of slope, from as early as 1800 or
even earlier (about 1660, even before the Industrial Revolution), suggests
that the linear change is natural change”

The University of Alabama at Huntsville provides monthly
plots of worldwide temperature anomalies for the troposphere since 2000 [http://climate.uah.edu/].
The following figure is from UAH and shows the temperature trend (degrees per
decade) for 1978 to 2006. According to the CO2 theory, warming should be
occurring over both poles – but this is not happening.

Data regarding volcanic aerosols is very sparse. A recent
NASA study found that the levels of cooling
volcanic aerosols has been declining in recent decades, as shown in the
following figure. (Global 'Sunscreen' Has Likely Thinned,
Report NASA Scientists 3/15/07) [http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/news/topstory/2007/aerosol_dimming.html]
The National Research Council (National Academy of Sciences) in their study
“Climate Change Science: An Analysis of Some Key Questions, said “The monitoring of aerosol properties has
not been adequate to yield accurate knowledge of the aerosol climate
influence”. (Notice in the above IPCC radiative forcing components
figure, volcanic aerosols do not appear in the Natural Processes section of
the figure.)

Recent studies are showing that black carbon (soot) plays
a larger role than CO2 in causing Arctic warming.

A 2008 Cornell University report “Global Warming
Predictions are Overestimated, Suggests Study on Black Carbon” [http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/Nov08/SoilBlackCarbon.kr.html].
The report states: “As a
result of global warming, soils are expected to release more carbon dioxide,
the major greenhouse gas, into the atmosphere, which, in turn, creates more
warming. Climate models try to incorporate these increases of carbon dioxide
from soils as the planet warms, but results vary greatly when realistic
estimates of black carbon in soils are included in the predictions, the study
found. … black carbon can take 1,000-2,000 years, on average, to convert to
carbon dioxide. … the researchers found that carbon dioxide emissions from
soils were reduced by about 20 percent over 100 years, as compared with
simulations that did not take black carbon's long shelf life into account.
The findings are significant because soils are by far the world's largest
source of carbon dioxide, producing 10 times more carbon dioxide each year
than all the carbon dioxide emissions from human activities combined.
Small changes in how carbon emissions from soils are estimated, therefore,
can have a large impact.”

The following figure shows the temperature response around
the world due to black carbon from research at the University of California,
Irvine [http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/06/070606113327.htm].
The global pattern matches the global temperature changes shown above more
closely than does the modeled results of CO2 influence.

The atmospheric CO2 generally has a low correlation with
temperature. The following figure shows the global temperatures and CO2 from
1998 to 2008 (comparing the satellite-measured lower troposphere temperature
and the Hadley Climatic research Unit data (used by IPCC). [http://intellicast.com/Community/Content.aspx?a=127].
While CO2 has steadily increased over the last decade, temperatures have not.

A 2008 study of the satellite-era temperature data (Christy
& Douglass: “Limits on CO2 Climate Forcing from Recent Temperature Data
of Earth”) [http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/0809/0809.0581.pdf].
“The recent atmospheric
global temperature anomalies of the Earth have been shown to consist
of independent effects in different latitude bands. The tropical latitude
band variations are strongly correlated with ENSO effects. …The effects in
the northern extratropics are not consistent with CO2 forcing alone … These
conclusions are contrary to the IPCC [2007] statement: “[M]ost of the
observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century
is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas
concentrations.”” They found that the underlying trend that may be due
to CO2 was 0.07 degrees per decade.

The following two figures are from the above Christy &
Douglass study. The first (left) shows the satellite-based temperature
anomalies for the Tropics (red), globe (black), northern extratropics (blue)
and southern extratropics (green). The second figure (right) shows the
correlation between the tropical temperatures and the ENSO3.4 (El Nino SSTs
for area 3.4)

A 2010 study [http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/01/100127134721.htm]
states: “A new estimate
of the feedback between temperature and atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2)
concentration has been derived from a comprehensive comparison of temperature
and CO2 records spanning the past millennium. The result, which is based on
more than 200,000 individual comparisons, implies that the amplification of
current global warming by carbon-cycle feedback will be significantly less than
recent work has suggested.”

There are many scientific studies on the atmospheric
residence of CO2, with many disagreements (i.e. the science is not settled).
Many studies show a residence of 5 to 15 years (although the IPCC claims that
it’s 100-200 years).

An example:“Atmospheric CO2 residence time and
the carbon cycle : Global warming” [http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&cpsidt=4048904]:
“An atmospheric CO2
residence time is determined from a carbon cycle which assumes that
anthropogenic emissions only marginally disturb the preindustrial equilibrium
dynamics of source/atmosphere/sink fluxes. This study explores the
plausibility of this concept, which results in much shorter atmospheric
residence times, 4-5 years, than the magnitude larger outcomes of the usual
global carbon cycle models which are adjusted to fit the assumption that
anthropogenic emissions are primarily the cause of the observed rise in
atmospheric CO2. The continuum concept is consistent with the
record of the seasonal photosynthesis swing of atmospheric CO2
which supports a residence time of about 5 years, as also does the bomb C14
decay history.”